The human scale spans both physical dimensions and sensory perception. Designers create spaces and objects like steps, doorways and chairs that are closely aligned to human measurement and how we see the world. But as we look beyond the human scale, new ideas and typologies emerge that help us rethink how we conceptualize architecture and build for the future.
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MVRDV has revealed the design of "De Oosterlingen", a series of seven sustainable residential buildings on Amsterdam’s Oostenburg Island. The proposed buildings are distributed in a 'barcode' composition, forming an apparent unified design but with an animated skyline and unique characteristics such as varying roof shapes and façades of wood, glass, recycled brick, and bio-based composite.
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The 2021-2022 A' Design Awards are now open and accepting early entires. The A’ Design Award & Competition provides valuable feedback and experience to its contestants. The A’ Design Award winners will proudly display their award trophies and design excellence certificates which grant them a high level of exposure and recognition.
The 17th Venice Architecture Biennale is currently unfolding, and its 60 national pavilions reveal a wide range of answers to the question "How will we live together". This year's edition restates the Biennale's role as a platform for inquiry, prompting a collective re-evaluation of pressing issues such as migration, inequality, climate change or the role of technology. While in Venice, Archdaily met virtually within the Korean pavilion with curator Hae-Won Shin, as the pandemic prevented the exhibition's creators to be present at the Biennale. The conversation explored the thinking behind "Future School" and how it creates a framework for collective learning and exploration.
Humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature, regardless of the physical or geographical conditions in which we find ourselves. As we become increasingly detached from the wilderness, we develop means and strategies to bring nature back into our daily lives, even if only for a few moments.
There are many ways of domesticating nature, as seen throughout the history of mankind, through fascinating structures that challenge technical limitations, such as vertical indoor gardens.
In Conflict, the Portuguese Official Representation at the 17th Architecture International Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2021, is co-curated by Carlos Azevedo, João Crisóstomo, and Luís Sobral of depA architects, and Miguel Santos. The exhibition addresses public spaces as arenas of conflict, understood as the action of opposing forces translated as dissension. In Conflict responds directly to the question 'How will we live together?' posed by Hashim Sarkis, curator of the Biennale Architettura, and is based on seven architectural processes involving collective dwellings that were the subjects of broad media coverage and public involvement.
As cliché as it may sound, there are two things that architects really like: exposed concrete and the color black. While concrete offers a distinctive rough aesthetic, emphasizing the tones, textures, and surfaces that shape the concrete mixture, the sobriety that the color black provides allows the architect to highlight specific characteristics precisely. Combining the two seems natural. But black pigmented concrete is not as common as we might imagine. Below we talk a little about the black concrete production process and some projects that use it.
Safdie Architects have released the images of 'ORCA Toronto', a mixed-use urban development with an integrated park in the heart of downtown Toronto. The project covers 6.5 hectares (65,000 sqm) west of the CN Tower, 4.5 hectares (45,000 sqm) of which are dedicated to the publicly-accessible urban park, while 2 hectares (20,000 sqm) are for residential, commercial, retail, and transit facilities. The proposed project reconnects the downtown area to the city’s waterfront, promising to become a vital hub that animates the underutilized parts of the city.
Across the globe, tall wood structures have begun transforming the world of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, ushering in an important shift to an architectural practice that has traditionally been dominated by steel and concrete. Typically defined as wood-constructed buildings over 14 stories or 50 meters high, the past six years have seen over 44 tall wood buildings built or underway around the world. Notable examples include Michael Green Architecture and DLR Group’s T3 and Team V Architectuur’s upcoming 73 meter residential tower HAUT.
Tadao Ando’s transformation of the historic Bourse de Commerce interweaves past and present, introducing the minimalist aesthetic of a contemporary art venue within the prestigious heritage building whose history spans four decades. The defining architectural gesture in the building’s refurbishment is a circular concrete wall, a new space within the glass-domed rotunda of the former exchange building, which now displays the private collection of notable art collector François Pinault. Images by photographer Cyrille Weiner and photography atelier Think Utopia highlight Tadao Ando’s vision of “architecture within architecture”, showcasing an exemplary restoration accompanied by a highly contemporary yet timeless intervention.
Architecture can be many things, also queer. Alongside many other transgressing words that carry different meanings and perspectives, this term triggers new insights into society and questions how we create architecture and urban planning projects, including their programs and activities. If there is any statement about how architecture should be done, if there is any conviction about what it represents, we wish here to avoid knowing what it is and be able to question its traditions to broaden the profession, its meanings, and social representation.
The history of Puerto Rico is reflected in its cities. The territory’s architecture has evolved from simple structures made of wood and thatch to monumental modern works. Shaped by both internal and external forces across its varied landscapes, Puerto Rico’s diverse styles represent over 400 years of Spanish rule and over 100 years as an unincorporated territory of the United States. Today, the island’s modern architecture reflects its multicultural background.
Four emerging architecture studio profiles from Italy, Switzerland, UK, USA, India, and Brussels have been chosen by New Generations, a European platform that analyses the most innovative emerging practices at the European level, providing a new space for the exchange of knowledge and confrontation, theory, and production. Since 2013, New Generations has involved more than 300 practices in a diverse program of cultural activities, such as festivals, exhibitions, open calls, video interviews, workshops, and experimental formats.
The Media Architecture Awards are handed out to the best projects in the integration of displays, interactive installations and other media into architectural structures, such as facades and urban screens. The winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on July 2 (15:30-16:30 CEST). The award ceremony will be live-streamed. In the coming weeks, the three nominations in each of the five categories will be revealed here on ArchDaily.
Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen how countries have responded to “How will we live together” in 115 different ways. Some studied the environment and how to sustain it, while others explored how they can create a safe space for refugees and citizens to coexist. In this roundup, we are concluding the list of national pavilions displayed at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, and highlighting how they answered curator Hashim Sarkis' question.
Energy codes around the world get stricter every year, architects need to prepare for various challenges ahead. The first step is to understand the key metrics needed to conduct early-stage analyses and collaborate across various teams. With buildings responsible for 39% of total carbon emissions, the design practice is evolving to bake in data-driven energy efficiency. This change is leading architects to quickly become building performance experts and create spaces that are high performance and healthy for occupants.
Büro Ole Scheeren' DUO Twin Towers project has been awarded CTBUH's 2021 Urban Habitat Award, which acknowledges the design's significant contribution to its urban context. Completed in 2018, the project restructures a previously disjointed and neglected part of Singapore, creating a dynamic place that enables social interaction. The award confirms the studio's socially and environmentally responsible approach to design. New footage by photographer Iwan Baan captures the DUO's silhouette and elevated landscape, hinting at the project's careful consideration of its urban and civic context.
In his book “The New Brutalism in Architecture: Ethical or Aesthetic?,” Reyner Banham establishes what he deems the semantic roots of the term 'Brutalism,' explaining that it comes from one of the " indisputable turning points in architecture, the construction of Le Corbusier's concrete masterpiece, la Unité d'habitation de Marseille. It was Corbusier's own word for raw or rough-cast concrete, "Béton brut," that made Brutalism a mainstay in architectural jargon and, in many ways, the term, as well as the architecture it described, flourished." In the book, Banham highlights the historical milestone marked by Corbusier's Unite d' Habitation and the socio-political context that shaped it. In steel-starved post-World War II Europe, exposed concrete became the go-to building material within the burgeoning Brutalist movement, which quickly defined itself by its bare-bone, rugged surfaces and dramatic, geometric shapes.
Due to the complex worldwide pandemic situation that erupted in 2020, the Venice Biennale 2020 declared a one-year postponement. Finally, the Venice Biennale 2021 will be holding the 17° International Architecture Exhibition —How will we live together?— curated by Hashim Sarkis, from May 22 to November 21, 2021.
The 2021 edition of La Biennale di Venezia also includes 112 participants in competition from 46 countries, with 60 national participants in the Giardini, at the Arsenale, and in the historic city center of Venice, Italy. Moreover, the international exhibition welcomes three countries, being part of the most important architectural biennale of the world for the first time: Grenada, Iraq, and Uzbekistan.
For several years, the construction sector has been facing a labour shortage, generating a growing interest in automation. The health crisis has only exacerbated the trend, prompting automation companies to turn their focus from car manufacturing to the construction industry, for which automation is expected to grow up to 30% within the next few years. The following explores present capabilities and future possibilities of automation within the construction process, its integration within the mainstream practice and the impact on design.
Perla on Broadway is the first new high-rise to be constructed in Los Angeles’s Broadway Theater District. Designed by CallisonRTKL, the tower will be the first addition within the district in over a century. Matt Hickman explores the latest addition to Downtown L.A.'s skyline in a piece originally published in The Architect's Newspaper.
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Responding to “How will we live together” in 115 different ways, the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale welcomed, physically, the large public, on May 22nd, 2021. Opening up furthermore to the world, the timeless yet context-sensitive theme engendered a collective imaginary, highlighting a world that would rather come together than stay apart. Building an architectural narrative of the present that reflects on a resilient future, the interrogation, first asked in 2019, gained more relevance with the pandemic that paused the world for a while. With a lot of optimism and love for the craft, the architectural exhibition opened its doors to a longing public and revealed recurring qualities in the showcased interventions.
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina are joined by Archie Lee Coates IV, a Co-Founder of the extremely multi-disciplinary design studio PLAYLAB. Archie discusses the evolution and future of PLAYLAB, naïveté in design and art, social equity in design practices and design, believing in humanity, design office as permeable amoeba, working with Virgil Abloh for the Louis Vuitton Show, and more.
The Media Architecture Awards are handed out to outstanding projects at the intersection of architecture, urban design and planning, media, art and interaction design. The winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on July 2 (15:00-16:15 (CEST). The award ceremony will be live-streamed. In the coming weeks, the three nominations for each of the five categories will be revealed here on ArchDaily.
.jpg?1622029620 "Argentina: La casa infinita by Gerardo Caballero. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
.jpg?1622015439 "Germany: 2038. The New Serenity by 2038. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
.jpg?1622015472 "Mexico: Desplazamientos / Displacements by Isadora Hastings, Mauricio Rocha, Elena Tudela. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
.jpg?1622015529 "Spain: Uncertainty by Domingo Jacobo González Galván, Sofía Piñero Rivero, Andrzej Gwizdala, Fernando Herrera Pérez. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
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